Molded Parts! New Router Bits, and More
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
As always it’s been a busy week for us.
Parts Production Progress
The work on our new molds is complete and the first test parts have been produced. They look great in photos and we’re hoping to have the parts to test in hand right around the end of the campaign allowing us to place our large orders without delay.
Here you can see the updated arm parts along with the new and improved belt guards.
Our updated idler gears which integrate the gear and shaft into a single part are also done, and we’re just waiting for those to complete heat treating and then they will be sent to us.
We have also placed an order for and started production on all of the new hardware nuts and bolts which are being bagged up for us. We are hoping to get a video of the automatic parts bagging machine in action and we will absolutely share that with you as soon as we do.
For some time now we have been disappointed in the quality of boards that we have gotten from our PCB supplier, but we were ordering only in small batches and so we had limited options for who to work with.
For the Kickstarter we are switching the production of the controller PCB over to the same factory that we used to assemble the encoder boards in our last campaign. They are excellent to work with, but require larger orders. We are currently waiting on a sample order from them to verify that they are able to correctly manufacture the Maslow4.1 control board so that we can begin production of those boards as soon as the Kickstarter campaign concludes.
Overall we are working hard to get our ducks in a row and start production on as many of the long lead time parts as possible so that we can get your rewards to you quickly.
Router Bits Back in Stock and New 1/8th Inch Router Bits
Our ¼ inch router bits which sold out are back in stock and we have a new 1/8th inch router bit now too!
There are a lot of great and astoundingly cheap 1/8th inch router bits on Amazon and we didn’t plan on making our own if we couldn’t offer something better (or cheaper, which we can’t).
What we’ve created is a 1/8th inch router bit with a much shorter cutting surface than they typically have. This allows the router bit to be chucked up in the router with less of the bit protruding, reducing the bit’s vibrations making it cut more quietly. We’re pleased with the results, let us know if you think we should make more of these.
Firmware Update
In last week’s firmware update we accidentally introduced a bug to the calibration process so this week’s update (v0.87) is mostly about fixing that 😬. Fortunately, while digging into what was going on we were able to make some other improvements like greatly reducing the size of the index.html.gz file which frees up a lot of storage space which we can use for future improvements.
The bug fix for the calibration process was an issue with how data was sent back to the machine after the calibration results were processed.
As always, let us know whenever you find an issue or something that we can improve on and we'll do our best to fix it right away!
Forums Highlights
This week @hobbybody used their Maslow to make two inspirational signs! We certainly are inspired by the crisp edge on the black lettering. Check out the post for a description of their workflow.
@Thunderscreech made some excellent stairs to help their corgi onto the bed. We are told that she does not like them yet, but hope for an update soon.
This weekend Anna decided to convert some of her Dad’s projects into CNC files and now they are up in the forums too! Check them out here
New Shorts!
This week we’ve also been working to convert some of our recent videos into Youtube Shorts. This is important because Shorts reach a wider audience than traditional Youtube videos because they are mobile friendly. We’d appreciated it if you could give them a view and a like for us.
That’s all we have for this week! Thanks for reading!
-Bar and Anna
